Supermicro rolls 1U petabyte NVMe system

The NVMe solution applies a new “ruler” form factor for Intel SSDs, which Supermicro claims provides more than double the capacity per rack unit and is 40% more thermal efficient.

Super Micro Computer Inc. has announced its petabyte scale all-flash Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) system that has a total of 32 “ruler” form factor SSDs in a 1U system.

The NVMe solution aims to provide all NVMe capacity at petabyte scale in 1U of rack space as the company plans to support 32TB Rulers in the near future. Compared to current U.2 SSD 2U storage systems, the new “ruler” form factor for Intel SSDs delivers more than double the capacity per rack unit and is 40% more thermal efficient, Supermicro said. The “ruler” form factor also optimizes rack efficiency, delivers space-efficient capacity, and simplifies serviceability, the company added.

With over 100 NVMe based platforms in its X11 server and storage portfolio, Supermicro is continuously expanding its offerings of NVMe servers and storage. The company's Supermicro BigTwin system supports up to 24 NVMe drives in 2U as well as 24 memory modules per node.

“Supermicro provides support for RAM and NVMe density on the BigTwin model that we are deploying for the new Intel Xeon Scalable processors. These systems allow us to support up to 6 NVMe drives per node for a total of 24 NVMe drives in 2U. This addresses the rapidly increasing performance demands that our clients put on our platforms,” said William Bell VP of Products at PhoenixNAP, an organization that offers a wide portfolio of cloud, bare metal dedicated servers, colocation, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions.

Supermicro’s all-flash 32-drive NVMe 1U system supports both “ruler” and U.2 form factors to offer customers increased storage flexibility. This 1U system will support a half petabyte of NVMe storage capacity this year and a full petabyte early next year.

In addition, Supermicro has developed 1U and 2U Ultra servers with 20 directly attached NVMe SSDs. These new X11 servers feature a non-blocking design, allocating 80 PCI-E lanes to the 20 NVMe SSDs. According to Supermicro, this approach provides the lowest possible latency and unleashes up to 18 million IOPS in throughput performance.